/m/tommy_john_surgery

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It seems to me--remembering as we always must that I'm not a professional athlete and don't think like one--that by the third Tommy John surgery, you'd probably have to accept that if you keep trying to pitch you're going to keep tearing your UCL and there's nothing for it.

Come to that, has any pitcher had a significant period of reasonable value after a 3rd TJ surgery. I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Isringhausen came back for a couple of seasons after his third TJ. He wasn't great but was above replacement level (0.1 WAR each year). Since he was his late 30s by this time it is conceivable that a younger pitcher could come back and pitch better or at least longer. But the odds seem overwhelmingly stacked against this.

Fredi worked Venters, O'Flaherty and Kimbrel very hard in 2011, and Venters and Kimbrel both struggled in the Braves' September collapse that year (O'Flaherty, to his eternal credit, pitched like gangbusters the entire season). Kimbrel obviously has been just fine ever since. Venters fell off and got hurt the very next year before embarking on his current Tommy John odyssey. O'Flaherty was lights out in 2012 before needing his own Tommy John surgery in 2013, though he seems to be recovering quite nicely for Oakland.

It's obviously impossible to draw any sort of direct causal link between that usage and those injuries. Venters already had one TJS under his belt before emerging as an ace set-up man in 2010, and relievers get hurt. It's what they do. But Fredi himself acknowledged that he worked them too hard, and he made a conscious effort in 2012 to protect those three and try to preserve more comfortable leads with lesser pitchers.

@11 Voros, I think Venters waited like 16 months before any rehab, and I think his longest session has been 25 pitches or so at 60%. Truth is Venters was done after the second injury. This one just ends it.